The Cimbrian hordes galloped across the dawn of history and clashed in screaming battle against the mighty Roman legions.
Led by their chief, Boierik, and his son, Eodan, the hungry and homeless pagan tribes hurled back the Romans time after time in their desperate search for land. But for all the burning towns, the new-caught women weeping, the wine drunk, the gold lifted, the Cimbri did not find a home.
And now it was over. At Vercellae the Roman armies shattered them completely. Only a few survived—and for them death would have been more merciful.
Eodan, the proud young chieftain, had been caught and sold into slavery, his infant son murdered and his beautiful wife, Hwicca, taken as a concubine.
But whips and slave chains could not break the spirit of this fiery pagan giant who fought, seduced and connived his way to a perilous freedom to rescue the woman he loved.
By : Poul William Anderson (1926 - 2001)
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This might have happened. The Cimbri are still remembered by the old district name Himmerland. Plutarch describes the battle at Vercellae, which took place 101 B.C., and its immediate aftermath. Other classical writers, such as Tacitus and Strabo, and a treasure of archeological material enable us to guess at the Cimbri themselves. Apparently they were a Germanic tribe from Jutland, with some elements of Celtic culture; by the time they reached Italy they had grown into a formidable confederation.
King Mithradates the Great (more commonly but less correctly spelled Mithridates) is, of course, also historical. His expedition into Galatia in 100 B.C. is not mentioned by the scanty surviving records; but it is known that he had already fought with that strange kingdom and annexed some of its territory, so border trouble followed by a punitive sweep down past Ancyra is quite plausible.
At that time the area now called southern Russia was dominated by the Alanic tribes, among whom the Rukh-Ansa were prominent. They are presumably identical with the "Rhoxolani" whom Mithradates' general Diophantus defeated at the Crimea about 100 B.C.
The tradition described in the epilogue may be found in the thirteenth-century Heimskringla and, in a different form, in the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus.
Otherwise my sources are the usual ancient and modern ones. I have tried to keep the framework of verifiable historical fact accurate. For whatever brutality, licentiousness and unreasonable prejudice is shown by the people concerned, I apologize, adding only that by the standards of the modern free world the era was a good deal worse than I care to describe explicitly.
For the sake of connotation, cities and other political units are generally referred to by their classical rather than contemporary names. It should be obvious from context where any particular spot lies on the map. However, the following list of geographical equivalents may be found interesting.
Ancyra: Ankara, Turkey
Aquitania: West central France
Arausio: Orange, France
Asia: In ordinary Roman usage, the modern Asia Minor plus India
Byzantium: Istanbul, Turkey
Cimberland: Himmerland, northern Jutland, Denmark
Cimmerian Bosporus: A Greek kingdom in the Crimea
Colchis: Mingrelian Georgia, U.S.S.R.
Dacia: Rumania
Galatia: Central Turkey
Gaul: France
Halys River: Kizil River, Turkey
Hellas: Greece
Hellespont: Dardanelles
Helvetia: Switzerland
Macedonia: Northern Greece
Massilia: Marseilles
Narbonensis: Provence, i.e., southern France
Noreia: Near Vienna, Austria
Parthian Empire: Iran and Iraq
Persia: Iran
Pontus: Eastern half of northern Turkish coast, and southward
Sinope: Sinop, Turkey
Tauric Chersonese: The Crimea
Trapezus: Trabzon, Turkey (medieval Trebizond)
Vercellae: Vercelli, Italy, between Turin and Milan
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